National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1003
Submission on the NDIS Amendment Bill
Name:
I am a: • Family member / supporter • Clinician
- My connection to this issue
I am writing this submission both as the aunt of an 11-year-old boy living with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1), Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 2, and ADHD, and as a psychiatry registrar working in frontline public mental health services in a regional area.
Through both my personal and professional experience, I have seen the enormous difference that appropriate disability supports can make to a child’s development, emotional wellbeing, family functioning, and long-term life trajectory. I have also seen the consequences when those supports are withdrawn, reduced, or made inaccessible through increasingly rigid and administrative systems.
My nephew is a bright, loving child with significant physical, emotional, and social support needs. His needs are not decreasing as he grows older — they are increasing. As he approaches high school, social expectations become more complex and unforgiving. Other children naturally become more independent, emotionally regulated, and socially skilled over time. For children like him, these skills do not emerge automatically. They require intensive teaching, repetition, therapeutic support, and enormous family effort.
His parents both work full time in essential community service roles. Without NDIS-funded allied health supports, many of these developmental goals become impossible to achieve safely or effectively.
- My overall view of this Bill
I have serious concerns about the proposed NDIS Amendment Bill.
While I understand and support the need for accountability within the NDIS system and agree that misuse of funding should be addressed, I believe these proposed changes risk harming the very people the scheme was created to support.
My concern is that the Bill increases administrative rigidity, reduces flexibility, and shifts decision-making further away from nuanced human assessment and toward standardised or automated systems. In practice, this will disproportionately affect children and families with complex needs who are already under immense pressure.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1003
I am particularly concerned that the reforms focus heavily on compliance and system efficiency while underestimating the real-world developmental, psychological, and social consequences of withdrawing or delaying supports.
- My main concerns
Administrative burden
Families caring for children with significant disabilities are already overwhelmed. Many are balancing therapy appointments, school advocacy, behavioural support, medical care, employment, and the emotional labour of caregiving.
Increasing review requirements, stricter communication expectations, and more rigid processes place additional burdens on families who are already functioning at capacity.
The result is that families spend increasing amounts of time fighting for support instead of actually caring for their child.
Loss or reduction of supports
One of the clearest examples in my nephew’s life is learning to ride a bike.
For many children, this happens naturally. For him, because of his physical and developmental disabilities, learning this skill requires many additional hours of structured intervention and support from allied health professionals including occupational therapy and physiotherapy.
He no longer has adequate funding for this support, and under the proposed changes it appears increasingly unlikely these supports will be restored.
To some people, riding a bike may sound trivial. It is not.
It is participation. It is belonging. It is inclusion in neighbourhood social life. It is keeping up with peers rather than watching from the sidelines.
The emotional impact of being left behind socially is significant, particularly as children move toward adolescence. As a mental health clinician, I have seen repeatedly how children who feel excluded, isolated, or chronically “different” can develop profound emotional distress over time.
Children / families / early intervention
Children with disabilities do not simply “grow out” of their support needs because they get older.
As expectations increase socially, emotionally, and academically, the gap between them and their peers often widens without adequate support.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1003
The work required to build independence, emotional regulation, communication skills, and adaptive functioning is intensive and ongoing. It takes hours of therapy, structured support, repetition, and coordinated intervention.
Without early and sustained supports, families are left attempting to manage highly complex developmental needs without the expertise required to do so effectively.
This is not only unfair to families — it is short-sighted public policy.
Crisis situations / “not contactable” rules
I am deeply concerned about provisions relating to participants being deemed “not contactable.”
People with disabilities may become temporarily unable to respond for many legitimate reasons including: • mental health crises • burnout • hospitalisation • communication difficulties • family breakdown • housing instability • cognitive overload
Punitive or inflexible responses to non-engagement risk disproportionately harming the people most in need of support.
The families most likely to struggle with administrative compliance are often the same families already under the greatest stress.
Increased use of administrative or automated systems
As a doctor working in mental health, I know that a diagnosis written on paper rarely captures the lived complexity of a person’s functioning.
Human beings cannot always be reduced to standardised categories, automated systems, or rigid criteria.
Disability exists within broader family, school, social, economic, and community contexts. Skilled professionals are needed to assess how these factors interact and what meaningful support actually looks like for an individual child and family.
I am concerned that increased reliance on administrative or automated systems reduces the system’s capacity to distinguish between genuine need and misuse, temporary functional fluctuation and disengagement, or developmental vulnerability and non-compliance.
In trying to remove people who misuse the system, these reforms risk punishing many people who are genuinely vulnerable and in need of support.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1003
- What this looks like in real life
What I see professionally is that when children repeatedly experience exclusion, failure, isolation, and lack of support, the consequences do not disappear — they emerge later in different forms.
Many adolescents who feel chronically left behind develop emotional distress, behavioural difficulties, school refusal, social withdrawal, substance use problems, or involvement with mental health and crisis services.
Importantly, this often occurs despite loving and committed families.
When developmental supports are removed early, the burden does not disappear from the system. It simply shifts later into mental health services, emergency systems, education systems, and community services.
These are far more expensive — both financially and socially — than providing meaningful early support.
- What I want the committee to understand
Disability support is not a luxury.
For many children and families, it is the difference between participation and exclusion, connection and isolation, development and deterioration.
Children with complex developmental conditions often require more support as they age, not less. Their needs become more visible and socially consequential over time.
The NDIS should not become so administratively rigid that it loses the ability to respond to real human complexity.
Fraud prevention and accountability are important goals, but reforms must not unintentionally harm the vulnerable families the scheme was designed to support.
Policies designed around efficiency alone risk creating much greater social and psychological costs in the future.
- My position on this Bill
I have serious concerns about this Bill.
I ask the Government to reconsider or substantially amend these proposed changes to ensure that: • vulnerable participants are not disadvantaged by rigid administrative systems, • families are not subjected to increasing bureaucratic burden, • allied health and developmental supports remain accessible, • and human assessment remains central to decision-making processes.
National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 Submission 1003
The long-term wellbeing of children with disabilities, their families, and the broader community depends on it.